The Golden Strawberry

Atheists are fighting back. So long a shunned and persecuted minority, especially in the United States (where, disgracefully, religious observance is still a de facto requirement for the holding of public office) people of unbelief have begun to assert themselves publicly and resist clerical bullying. This has been spurred by the publication of several books, the most recent (and best) being Christopher Hitchens ‘god Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything’.

Hitchens is a throw back to the old eighteenth century man of letters, in the vain of Samuel Johnson and Percy Shelley. Hyper-educated, always pissed-off, able to wax lyrical about anything from the Bolshevik revolution to the Dreyfus Affair: he has no equal in Anglo-American journalism. His book is theologically literate and refreshingly worldly- combining a superb amount of scholarship and reading with a deep and broad knowledge of the world, gained from his extensive travels as a foreign correspondent for various newspapers and magazines. The tottering and crepuscular edifices of the world’s three major religions give Hitchens ample opportunity to display his legendary wit and sharp turn of phrase. For example, Hitchens proposes that the motto of the Catholic Church should be ‘no child’s behind left’, a reference to that organizations disgraceful record with regards its cover up of Clerical rape of children. The text is littered with classic one-liners like these. Indeed, humor and irony has always been a key weapon in the heathen’s rhetorical arsenal, Voltaire had it in spades, as did Bertrand Russell and the great Karl Marx. Hitchens deploys his own ample reserves of these tried and tested weapons-of-clerical destruction with scalpel-accurate precision and brutal effectiveness.

There seem to me two arguments afoot about the recent spate of proselytizing atheist books. The first one is the age-old question: is religion moral? Does it improve people’s behavior? Can a good life be lived without it? In this sense, Hitchens (and Richard Dawkins in ‘The God Delusion’) are simply carrying the torch passed to them by their illustrious heretical forebears: Russell, Voltaire, Spinoza, Lucretius and Socrates. This argument is as old as philosophy itself, and, as Marx said, its commencement marks the beginning of all criticism. Where faith ends, philosophy begins. These books are wonderful primers for a life free from faith and religious dogma. In essence, they are continuations of Bertrand Russell’s maxim, that the good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge, free from fear of death and the constricting iron-age doctrines of faith preached by Priest and Church.

I have chosen a side, as most people who think seriously about this question do at some stage in their lives. The intellectual case against religion and the faith impulse is overwhelming. Darwinian biology has provided us with an explanation of our origins far more simple, beautiful and eloquent than anything contained in a man-made holy text. Religion and science are not, as Stephen Jay-Gould, the great evolutionary biologist, once said, ‘non-overlapping magisteria’: two spheres of human thought that deal with separate areas of life and experience. Religion claims to have all the answers, it always has done, and probably always will. The meaning of life, origins of the cosmos, the creation of mankind, how to live a good life – priests and mullahs have issued edicts and commands on these questions for thousands of years, thus fulfilling a basic human hunger for Answers. Of course, the religious explanations satisfied people in bygone eras, when our species was still in its infancy, unaware of the world and its structure. With recent adherence towards free inquiry and empirical observation, we no longer need such crude answers. God is dead, and science killed him.

The Churches know this, and have been fighting a desperate rear-guard action to stem the rising tide of enlightenment – witness the current controversy over the teaching of ‘Intelligent design’ to children in the United States . Hitchens describes this sinister phenomenon well when he says:

‘Intelligent Design’ is a desperate ploy by desperate men who know they have lost the argument and are trying to hold up their crumbling Churches by resorting to dishonest word-play. It is a sign of the times: religion is losing its iron grip on humankind.

A recent survey conducted at Piermont College in California by Phil Zuckerman, a distinguished sociologist, puts the figure of non-believers at between five hundred and seven hundred and fifty million – bear in mind that this excludes such thickly populated countries as Brazil, Iran, Indonesia and Nigeria, for which information is lacking or patchy. This makes unbelief the fourth largest persuasion in the world, after Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. Most importantly, it is by far the youngest, with no significant presence in the West before the eighteenth century. Give atheism the same amount of time Christianity has had, about two thousand years, and there may be no theists left at all. One can only hope (and continue our rational inquiries and patient tests into the Universe).

The second question thrown up by the critics of the ‘New Atheists’ (a false term – they are part of a very old and very venerable radical tradition) is a strange one. They are accused of employing language that is too forceful; of being arrogant, of ‘offending’ people by their (allegedly) harsh tones and by doing the cause of atheism more harm than good by alienating moderates, who will be put off by their suppose ‘self-righteousness’.

This is a cowardly and ahistorical criticism. It is uttered by people who do not appreciate the great struggles of the past, when religion had to be forcibly separated from power. Religion is not a benign force which will give up its stranglehold on our species without a fight. It is run by cynical men who have seen an opportunity to grab power over the credulous and exploited it, thus causing immeasurable suffering to millions of people over the centuries. It is up to those of us who see things clearly to spread the fruits of reason to people who are still living in darkness. We can employ strident language and we can be just a principled and passionate as those we oppose. Remember, though, that the New Atheists have only published several books, they have not excommunicated anyone, or declared a jihad or launched a holy war. The secularist, reason-based way of doing things is undoubtedly the more civilized one.

If all this book does is inspire the non-believers and fails to persuade anyone to abandon their blinkered faith-based worldview, is it a failure? Avowedly not. Atheists can organize, we can campaign for secularism and the removal of religious indoctrination (not the teaching of religion, which is very important for an informed intellect) from schools. We can, and must, defend the iron wall that separates religion from state power; and we can celebrate our position as free human beings, capable of forging our own world through our own efforts – free from superstition and dogma.

The most beautiful chapter in Hitchens book is entitled ‘A Finer Tradition: The Resistance of the Rational’. It is a love letter not only to the great heroes of the past who have done so much for human freedom to think and speak, but to Reason itself. This is what Hitchens book is about, not so much an attack on the evils of religion, because that can and has been done and is obvious to anyone who cares enough to engage their brain on the subject. More so, it is an inspiring defense of Reason, and of humankind’s ability to apply its intellect to the world surrounding it. Using this precious gift, we can build a freer, more prosperous and just world. Hitchens thinks religion is the prime obstacle to this ‘New Enlightenment’; his new book makes an extremely strong case for this interpretation.

-posted by Adam